Kennedy at Trinity Graduation with Barbara Bailey Kennelly '58 (a future member of Congress and currently Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Trinity) and her father, John Bailey, Chair, Connecticut Democratic Committee

Trinity classmates Nancy D’Alessandro Pelosi ’62, the first and only woman elected Speaker of the House (center right), and Cecelia Lynett Haggerty ’62 (center left) campaign for John Kennedy for president in 1960.

Trinity alumnae video remembrances of JFK

Watch Trinity President Pat McGuire ’74, former Trinity President Sr. Margaret Claydon SND ’45, former Congresswoman and Trinity alumna Barbara Kennelly ’58 and more discuss Kennedy’s visits to campus, his life, his death and his legacy.

With those inspiring words to the Trinity College Class of 1958, then-Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy concluded his June 2, 1958, Commencement address on Trinity’s campus. As the nation, and the world, pauses on the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination to reflect on his legacy, the Trinity community remembers that special day in June when his words motivated and challenged the Class of 1958.“This is a great institution of learning, Trinity College,” he said. “Its establishment and continued functioning like that of all great colleges and universities, has required considerable effort and expenditure. I cannot believe that all of this was undertaken merely to give the school’s graduates an economic advantage in the life struggle…. I strongly urge the application of your talents to the public solution of great problems of our time … above all, the knotty, complex problems of war and peace …of preventing man’s destruction of man by nuclear war.”Just over two years later, he was elected president. And, in another three years, he was gone.